Footnotes to Sex

by Mia Farlane

  ‘Mm-hmm.’ It sounded terrible.

  ‘Is it progressing?’

  ‘Yes, little by little.’ She could hear surprised greeting sounds coming through the walls. Jansen had discovered Elizabeth at home for the evening.

  ‘Elizabeth’s staying here now. For the moment,’ May told Francine.

  ‘Who’s that? A friend of yours?’

  ‘No, my sister.’

  ‘Ah, yes. I remember: what was it she’s doing again?’

  ‘Sculpting, night classes – she’s not going any more though. She’s decided to move to London, and so we’ve said she could live with us until she finds somewhere.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, very generous. You get on well, both of you?’

  ‘I think so. Yes, quite well, I think.’

  ‘That’s all very good then. So, everything’s fine. No problems?’

  ‘No. Everything’s fine. Thank you, yes.’

  ‘You are going to be my ambassadrice anglaise!’ Francine concluded.

  After May got off the phone, she realized something: Elizabeth was running a bath. May wanted to brush her teeth and go to bed. She found the idea of a bath at this time of night irritating. She just wanted to feel that at nine o’clock – or thereabouts – night-time and peace had started. She stood in front of the closed door, and listened to the water thundering into the bath, wondering how to get her toothbrush, whether to knock, or just leave it. The sitting-room door opened. Elizabeth, now wearing a towel, passed May; she was carrying her jeans slung over one arm, a fresh T-shirt and some shampoo balanced on top of them.

  ‘It’s a door,’ Elizabeth explained.

  ‘What,’ May scowled at her, ‘are you talking about?’

  ‘You look like you’re analysing it: the door to the source. Shall I go in? Shall I not go in?’

  May ignored her. ‘Are you going out somewhere?’

  Of course Elizabeth was going out, and of course Jansen was polite and called out from the sitting room to ask where, and showed interest, and then Elizabeth checked the bath temperature, turned off the cold tap and wandered back into the sitting room. She sat on the sofa with her towel outfit on, and she and Jansen settled down for a nice friendly conversation.

  The bathroom was free. May brushed her teeth. She wished Elizabeth would come and watch the bath. It would overflow. It was not May’s job to watch it. She wished Elizabeth would get on with having her bath, so that she and Jansen could go to bed and talk. May looked in at them. They were engaged in some laughy conver-happy-sation.

  ‘I might just come out dancing with you,’ Jansen was saying.

  ‘I’m off to bed,’ May cut in. ‘I’ve come down with a cold.’

  ‘Yeah, good nightee!’ Elizabeth’s tone was mocking.

  ‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ Jansen said.

  ‘Yeah.’ May left the room.

  May looked at the clock: 2.15 a.m. She was still awake. This was partly due to her blocked nose, and partly due to four or five large vitamin C tablets – she had taken them within the space of two hours. Now she was clogged up and wound up. She pulled herself to a martyred ninety-degree sitting angle. ‘I know you aren’t very happy about this,’ Jansen had come in to say goodbye before going out, ‘but I’ll just sneak in, and you’ll be fast asleep.’ May was still not fast asleep; she was thinking about Elizabeth, who loved dancing, and who was no doubt sparkling away right now, dazzling Jansen with her funky moves and fooling around on the dance floor, making her laugh. ‘No, I won’t say when I’ll be back, or you’ll just wait for me, and then you won’t sleep. I’ll be late.’ Yes.

  ‘I can’t breathe! Great, I’m not allowed to sleep!’ May complained aloud, even though this was slightly less satisfying when there was no one there to sympathize, no one to keep awake.

  She clicked on the light, and scrawled out a message to Jansen: could you buy me some oranges?

  Her head was spinning. She switched off the light, and tried lying down. But, no, it was impossible. She hauled herself back up into the sitting position, so that she could breathe. If it wasn’t so late she might almost have called Francine, just to tell her how unwell she was feeling; she was feeling so unwell, she would be capable of doing something stupid like that. Then she remembered: the draft version of her letter to Francine. She clicked on the light again. She could use this time to copy out the neat version. But could she? She could not: because, if she was going to copy it out – and the notes about L’Ange et les pervers – she’d have to be awake enough to do any editing, any cutting or rewriting. She would have to do it later, just as soon as she woke up. She ripped out a blank page from her diary: copy out comments on Francine’s article and on the L’Ange book TODAY! she ordered herself (not that she’d be up to going to the post office before it closed at twelve thirty, but she could at least get it all ready to go).

  18

  The Morning After

  Jansen’s teddy bear was perched on her pillow, and underneath was a message:

  Good morning, darling. I hope you had a long sleep and that you’re feeling better. You were sleeping soundly when I left. I’ll bring you home some oranges, xx.

  It was eight o’clock; Jansen must have only just left.

  Perhaps May would call Francine now. She picked up the receiver. She put it down again. She lay in bed, staring over at the phone, wishing it would ring, that Francine would call her.

  And then the phone rang.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘May?’

  ‘Francine.’

  ‘I woke you up,’ Francine said.

  ‘No, I’m awake. I just happened to be looking at the phone. I was looking at the phone. And then it rang. And then you rang. That’s strange.’ May smiled.

  ‘You were waiting for a call. You were willing the phone to ring.’

  ‘Yes. I wanted someone to call me. That’s true.’

  ‘Someone in particular?’

  ‘I’m glad that you called,’ May conceded. She couldn’t help smiling. This must be what it felt like, she thought, to have an illicit phone conversation, to be pursued by someone; she let her head float off for a while.

  ‘Perhaps I should get you to stare at my phone sometime,’ Francine said. ‘Would you do that for me?’

  ‘Yes, if you like.’

  It was wonderful that Francine had called. She had called last night, and now she had called again. This was the second call; Francine had called her twice.

  ‘So,’ Francine said, ‘I am phoning to say that I have now sent you a few articles and interviews about me that you could use for your letters to the universities – you’ll find them useful for your dissertation as well.’

  ‘Yes, okay.’ Francine had called her on business.

  ‘And, looking through my papers this morning, I just realized that I have not included an important interview I did a couple of years ago for a Canadian publication.’

  ‘Oh.’ May felt a bit stupid now; she hoped that her smile hadn’t come across earlier.

  ‘Therefore, I would like you to wait for that to arrive before you send anything off. It won’t arrive for another week, because I want to send it to you together with the invitation to my book launch; they are being printed at the end of this week, and I want you to have one of these invitations as well.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You will have all that in about a week, no doubt.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And are you well?’ Francine asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re not very talkative this morning. You’re tired perhaps?’

  ‘Yes, I am a little tired, and I’ve got a cold.’

  ‘Oh, yes I can hear it in your voice. I shan’t keep you on the phone in that case.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. I look forward to seeing you quite soon, and you’re going to send me a letter with your thoughts about L’Ange et les pervers before then, and the book.’

  ‘Yes.’

&
nbsp; That was it. That was the conversation. May had drifted into fantasyland, and forgotten to ask Francine how she was. May closed her eyes. She couldn’t call her back now: ‘Oh, hello, Francine. It’s May. I forgot to ask you how you are. So… how are you?’ Not possible. Hopeless. She was useless.

  May put on some socks that she found on the bedroom floor. She went into the kitchen, where she considered doing the dishes, or maybe she’d just rinse them. She dropped a Redoxon into half a glass of water and, while it fizzed, she stared out of the window at the housing estate lawns and the tiny square of play area; it was raining. She drank her Redoxon and frowned at the dishes: Elizabeth stacked, but she didn’t get rid of leftover food, which was the obvious first thing to do. May started scraping little lumps of something into the bin. She’d fill up the sink with hot water and leave the dishes to soak. Why was she awake? She switched the kettle on and waited for the sink to fill up. Maybe she’d take toast and lemon tea back to bed, and write out the final version of her notes on L’Ange et les pervers. The letter to Francine had to be sent on Monday, and her book.

  May returned to bed, and looked through her notes:

  At first I thought the main character in L’Ange et les pervers was a man – ‘il’ – a boy, rather, since it begins with his childhood; later, I understood that ‘he’ was brought up as ‘he’, but was in fact a girl (physically) – or so I thought – and the character discovers this later, except that ‘he’ doesn’t, because ‘he’ still considers himself ‘he’ (I’m simplifying) – or perhaps both male and female, if I understood this correctly.

  May rejected that paragraph. She kept reading:

  The main character, as a ‘garçonne’, mixes with lesbians; and, as a ‘feminine man’, mixes with gay men. However, she/he has no intimate relationship of any sort with anyone from either group.

  May would leave out all that, as well.

  Finally, she/he (as ‘she’, but later returning to ‘he’) adopts the bastard son of the female lover (by this married woman’s adulterous male lover) of the main character’s friend.

  Questions: (May read on)

  1. What does this adoption symbolize? The main character is parenting ‘his’ (sic) masculine self? Meaning?

  2. Was the main character an unwanted girl, or was ‘she’ and/or ‘he’ an unwanted hermaphrodite?

  Or was that a confused question that demonstrated just how much May had not understood?

  May would keep the first question only. And now for the letter… She heard someone unlocking the front door. She got out of bed to go and have a look.

  It was Elizabeth letting herself in. ‘I’ve come back to get a bit of sleep,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to lock this again?’

  She must have been out all night.

  ‘Did you have a good sleep?’ Elizabeth locked the door.

  ‘No. I’m going back to bed now. I’m not feeling brilliant.’

  Elizabeth walked past May. The sitting room would be out of use for the rest of the day. May went back to bed. It was a dull day, still raining, with low dark clouds: perfect weather, in any case, for not getting up. She got an envelope out of the writing desk, and addressed it to Francine. May was sitting in bed, looking in her wallet for a stamp, when there was a tap on the bedroom door.

  ‘You’ll be happy to know’ – Elizabeth poked her head in the door – ‘that Jansen’s bringing us back some curries tonight: because of your cold. She’s a lovely woman, a really lovely woman. We had a great night last night. She’s quite a hot dancer.’ Elizabeth seemed to be revising a previous assumption. ‘What are you reading?’ She came in and plonked herself on the bed.

  ‘I’ve read it. I’ve finished it. I’m just looking through it.’

  ‘L’Ange et les perverse.’ Elizabeth leaned forward and picked up the book. ‘Hey, I like the pictures! Great sketches.’

  ‘“Pervers” – you don’t pronounce the “s”.’

  ‘Per-r-r-ver-r-r,’ Elizabeth overdid the ‘r’, as if she was being sick. ‘The Angel and the Perverts: intr-r-reeeguing.’

  ‘Could you be careful? It doesn’t belong to me.’ ‘Delarue-Mardrus,’ Elizabeth noted. She hopped off the bed, and handed the book back to May. ‘Those are uptight letters, by the way,’ she pointed at the envelope lying on the bed, ‘if you’re interested. Your handwriting shows you’re holding on to something.’ She went to pull the door shut again.

  May picked up the envelope and put a stamp on it.

  ‘If you want to come across intelligent and relaxed, you need to take less care to make your handwriting so legible,’ Elizabeth went on from diagnosis to helpful advice. ‘You’ll have noticed with very clever people – artists and doctors, lawyers for example – you can never read their handwriting, can you? Not easily,’ she answered her own question.

  ‘That’s very interesting.’

  ‘I’m not saying you’re stupid. I’m saying handwriting is like body language; that’s all: it will be interpreted.’

  ‘Thank you.’ And now May wanted Elizabeth to go away.

  ‘What you say is only half of the message, probably even less than half.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Eventually, Elizabeth picked up the other half of the message, and left the room.

  ‘You’re “quite a hot dancer”, by the way,’ May told Jansen that night, once the bedroom door was jammed shut with a sock, and they were sitting in bed together.

  ‘Am I?’ Jansen smiled. She picked up the clock to check the alarm was on for the next morning.

  ‘You look pleased,’ May said.

  Jansen laughed. She put the clock back on the stool.

  ‘Oh, you’re really pleased,’ May corrected herself.

  ‘Yes. It’s a compliment. And quite a good one.’ Jansen got out of bed again. ‘I’m going to go and brush my teeth.’

  May knew Jansen was leaving the room because she was annoyed, and because that is what pacifists do when they’re annoyed. It was convenient for Jansen that she had forgotten to brush her teeth.

  A few minutes later, Jansen came back, turned out the light, and climbed back into bed again.

  May tried to say something nice. ‘You are a good dancer,’ she said. ‘I’m just feeling annoyed with Elizabeth,’ she explained. ‘It’s not that she’s done anything; I just need my space.’ May swivelled her eyes about. ‘She is my sister and I do care about her.’ It was so irritating to have to say this: not because it wasn’t true, but May wasn’t in the mood to say it. She was only saying it because she felt pressured into being positive. ‘I do love her,’ she added.

  ‘I know you do.’ Jansen appreciated the effort.

  ‘And I need my space. It disturbs me having her here,’ May went on. ‘I can’t even think of doing the PhD, when I haven’t got the space to get it done. Francine wants me to show her what I’ve been doing. I have three weeks to come up with something. And now I’ve got Elizabeth wandering around smoking and sleeping and having endless baths.’

  ‘Okay,’ Jansen accepted the apology, ‘let’s get some sleep.’ She snuggled into her.

  ‘And I can’t work in the sitting room, in case she turns up.’

  ‘I’m really tired,’ Jansen said. She was annoyed again.

  May attempted not to talk.

  ‘I’ve just driven all the way down to Bexhill-on-Sea, back up to Gatwick, and from there to Waterloo. The traffic was – terrible; you have no idea. Then a passenger asks me if I would drive her over night to Brussels! She’d missed the last Eurostar, and wanted to be back for her son’s birthday. The tip would’ve been good…’

  May had a thought.

  ‘I’m exhausted,’ Jansen said.

  ‘What about if I was sick on Friday?’ May suggested. ‘Then we’d have a weekend together. We could do something special.’

  Jansen reminded her, ‘I’m back at work on Sunday.’

  ‘I know. That’s what I mean. We’d have Friday and Saturday.’

  ‘I’m giving
blood on Friday,’ Jansen said.

  ‘I could come with you.’

  ‘If you want, but, May –’

  ‘Or I could take tomorrow off, but I don’t suppose it’d be realistic for me to be sick tomorrow and Friday.’

  ‘I’ll think about it. May, just to let you know: if you spend the day with me on Friday, I’m seeing Tamsin in the afternoon, so you’d have to decide whether you want to see her (which would be nice – that would be fine), or not; in which case I could drop you somewhere near a tube station.’

  ‘Drop me somewhere? Why would I want you to drop me somewhere? If I’m taking the day off, it would be to spend time with you.’

  ‘I’m just letting you know what I’ll be doing.’

  ‘We never have any time together, and now you’re using up a free day spending it on Tamsin.’

  ‘We’ve still got Saturday together.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Why don’t we plan to do something really nice, the following week, once you’re on holiday? We could take the train down to Bexhill-on-Sea – if I can get Thursday off.’

  ‘And you couldn’t cancel your Tamsin thing?’

  ‘I’m not cancelling it.’

  ‘(I was asking a question; that’s all.)’

  ‘She’s got an interview,’ Jansen said, ‘and she’s going to call when it’s over, so we can arrange somewhere to meet – it depends on the weather – she’s quite keen on a wander along the South Bank. We might go as far as the cathedral, and stop at the café.’

  ‘Are we going to spend the whole day with her?’

  ‘You don’t have to come at all, if you don’t want to. I’m telling you what I’m doing.’

  ‘I may as well go to school, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s fine. Let’s go to sleep.’

  ‘What time did you get back last night? I didn’t even hear you come in. It must’ve been very late.’

  ‘Yes, it was late.’

  ‘How late?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jansen replied. She was already falling asleep.

  ‘No, I said, “How late was it?” When did you get home?’